Cabbage Pot Pre-Production Diary | The Gromples

I thought it might be a useful tool to post the progress of a new animated feature I'm currently in the very early stages of creating.

For almost two years now my drawings have featured these small skeletal creatures which sprung forth from a small sketch one day whilst on a break during my animation class. The creatures would later be called 'Gromples' - an apt filmic term which roughly means an unrealistic change an art director might request during production; the constant nitpicker who is never truly satisfied. If that name has any resemblance to these creatures, I'm not entirely sure, my main concern was in finding a name which sounded different enough from Goblin or Gremlin! With the advent of a name came the advent of needing a world for these creatures to inhabit and thus came about trying to classify these beings as 'Sprites', a name which is usually ascribed to Fairies, Pixies and other small, magical creatures, mostly those who dwell in forests. The Gromples however were derived from that first sketch, a Station Master dressed in a workman's overalls and carrying an old oil lamp to light his way on dark nights on the platforms.

Already an aesthetic template was chosen, the Gromples' world would be one of industry, echoing late Victorian era Europe. The next few Gromples I drew were for Birthday cards, dressed in suits of various states of disrepair, denoting class and wealth yet without any cohesion or sense of belonging which of course will come later.

It wasn't until my third year and first unit of my final art course at University that these creatures would soon be placed together in the same world, even if no habitats were yet designed (and to this day have still yet to be) for them to live and take on a life of their own. Various questions arose from this melding: What do female Gromples look like? Children Gromples? What apparatus did they use, what do Gromple prams look like? A few of the drawings from that unit became part of an art installation that attempted to show the day-to-day process of my life as written in a journal.

During the time between my university work I was commissioned to create and install an artwork for Grossi Florentino's new bar 'Arlechin'. I had about two weeks to come up with a design and get it all printed and pasted up, settling on the Gromples for the content of the work. They're what I'm comfortable drawing and thought was reasonable enough to fill a twelve metre long wall, throwing a few trees in for good measure. Here's the original draft page for what the illustration would become:

In the top left corner you might be able to discern two thumbnail sketches where I tried to block in how I could use the door to work the characters around - ultimately that proved to be completely useless as I didn't take any measurements from my visit to the location, just a general gist of where things should go. To fill in twelve metres was a challenge at first, but two A3 sized sheets scale up quite nicely to the right dimensions, with a little cropping here and there.

Armed with a mechanical pencil, a biro pen and very sore fingers, the drawing took at least a week to complete, I really had to push myself to get it done to have enough time to scan it professionally, get it printed (60 sheets of A0 tiles) and paste it to the wall! Unfortunately the two Gromple's in the centre, the mother and daughter would be cut out because of the placement of the back door to the restaurant! That was a shame, but I thought having the full three Gromples on the left hand side was more important as that side of the wall has two vents which I was worried would interfere with what I thought was the most important part. Here it is installed, three days of cooking wheatpaste which is sickening to smell and driving into the city with the help of family to get it all up:

The commission cut into the first week of my next unit at uni in which the time came to choose a project to undertake and complete (or at least develop to a certain state of completion) for my final art unit of my Bachelor's degree. At this point I was conflicted. For a while, at least a year, I had been developing another project with a friend from uni. It was and still is a project still too ambitious to attempt where I am now in terms of my skills and confidence as an artist, with my time torn between drawing Gromples and other uni work that demanded attention. So with that project sidelined but not completely forgotten or abandoned I decided my project would follow the Gromples and specifically the creation of a few characters in a new story.

'Cabbage Pot' is that story, all stemming from that first Gromple sketch two years ago. Cabbage, a lowly magician and trader and his best friend who cobbles various nic-nacs together, Pottle. The two friends go around hunting for lost treasure and trade it in their steam-powered horseless carriage.

Something I think worth mentioning at this point is how uncanny a character can come into existence from seemingly disparate places of influence and interest. Nothing comes from a truly unique place, nothing truly original, but the hope of being content with your work is in fooling yourself into believing it to be original enough. The characters of Cabbage and Pottle are at their core archetypes of the common held ideals of best friends; the cheerful fat friend whom I've drawn from much of my own character; the slightly lanky and more normal, yet somehow a social outcast leader, and the comradery between the two. There's nothing magical or otherworldly about them, but that's the power of archetypes in their ability to be familiar and wholesome, loved and recognised - they're coming from the same places we do. They have hearts and can be just as vulnerable to emotions as we are.

Now in these early stages developed over the last month and a half comes the process of breathing life into these beings and giving them a story worth telling.

The following few posts will be chronicling the process of creating the characters and will continue in the future as the journey continues to create the world of Cabbage Pot...